As
a writer, David Mamet is enamored of the con game, and he often plays just such
a game with his audiences. So it is in Boston
Marriage, his play set in the Victorian era and featuring three female
characters.
Right
there, you know the con is afoot since Mamet is known for his
testosterone-drenched plays and movies that feature a whirling sharknado of macho
profanities. But here, most of the language is stilted and arch—sometimes
arched over to the breaking point—as two women on the fringe of the upper class and a maid prowl the
minefield of their drawing room (lushly rendered by scenic designer Ron
Newell).
This
play fascinates as much as it confounds, offering many deliciously dense
passages that are both amusing and invigorating. But these Mametian verbal
joustings go on so long, with very little actually happening (unlike, say, in Glengarry Glen Ross) that one eventually
tires from this genteel exercise in conversational sparring.
The
title of this show comes from a wink-wink, nudge-nudge term for lesbian relationships back
in the day, and the privileged women in this play clearly have something of a
history. Anna, in whose house the action is set, is well set up thanks to a
male “protector” for whom she provides sex and is rewarded with a handsome income.
Claire
is her, ahem, close friend who it turns out has fallen in love with a pretty
young girl who is constantly being chaperoned by her mum. So Claire want to use
Anna’s house for her seduction of the cute little thing, an idea that fills
Anna with jealousy and lots of free-floating rage.
A
good deal of her venom is focused on the maid Catherine (a consistently
on-point Khaki Hermann), whom the ladies always refer to by other names
(Bridie, Mary, etc.). And Anna continually berates the poor, emotionally
fragile girl for her Irish background, although Catherine repeatedly says she
is Scottish.
That
amounts to plenty of fuel for some dangerous games(wo)manship, but since the
dewy object of Claire’s affections never appears, we are left with these three
who poke and prod each other, in glorious and occasionally anachronistic (“Tell
it to the Marines!”) language, for two hours.
Assessing
the acting in a Mamet play is often a con game all its own, since the
playwright favors non-inflected acting and often writes his material to induce
such performances.
As
Anna, Shana Beth McGee turns the knife with mean-girl precision when she
assaults Catherine. But her relationship with Claire is not so straightforward,
with hints piling up in profusion. Laboring under a large, unnatural and
ungainly wig, McGee spends too much time staring into the middle distance and
not enough lasering in on her buddy Claire.
Cathleen
O’Malley’s Claire seems appropriately smitten by the unseen girl. However
O’Malley tends to strike attitudinal poses (now distressed, now bemused) that
never knit themselves into a believable character.
Of
course, believability is not often the goal in a Mamet play. But the words and performances still have to add up to something more than a jumble of clever sentences and elegant postures for a
play to be thoroughly involving, and that’s where this production stumbles a
bit.
Still,
director Christine McBurney makes the most out of many of Mamet's lines, some of which you’d like to take
home and put in a velvet-lined box. To wit, when Claire erupts emotionally at
Anna at one point and then says, “I’m sorry I was moved to speak with
enthusiasm.”
Even
though the blocking tends to be hyperactive at times, this is a show that
invites you into the interpersonal con games people play. And no one does a con
quite like David Mamet.
Boston
Marriage
Through
August 4 produced by Mamai Theatre in residence at Ensemble Theatre, 2843
Washington Blvd., Cleveland Hts., 216-570-3403
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